One thing critics of ancient cultures often miss is how easy “freedom” and “liberty” were to achieve in the ancient world and how hard order was to maintain.
One could curse the king easily in the ancient world with almost no chance the king would ever hear of it! Any society was just a few bad harvests from chaos.
Ancient cultures tended to develop rules, for good reasons, that emphasized justice and good order, because in those times order was harder to maintain.
Technology helped the central power . . . and has made order easier to maintain. I would argue it has made it too easy! As a result modern thinkers began to emphasize keeping the central government out of our lives. The king could do things in a modern context that ancient kings could do in theory . . . but never in practice!
So one reason “liberty” is less emphasized in any ancient text is that “order” was often a bigger priority . . . and harder to abuse.
March 10th, 2010 | 1:26 pm | #1
Not just a modern novelty.
March 10th, 2010 | 8:40 pm | #2
Agreed this time, John Mark. Philip Jenkins notes in his Lost History of Christianity that, within the muslim world, those christian peoples living in less accessible mountain regions, e.g., Mount Lebanon and Montenegro, were relatively untouched by the Ottoman Sultan’s policies vis-à-vis religious minorities. Thus pressures to convert to Islam to escape harsh taxation were less felt in these places. Christian communities survived because they were largely shielded from the central government’s power. There certainly is a down side to our modern centralized states, which is one reason why federalism is such a good idea.
We all recall the rabbi’s response in Fiddler on the Roof when asked about a proper blessing for the tsar: “May God bless and keep the tsar . . . far away from us!”
March 11th, 2010 | 1:18 am | #3
David,
We could not agree more.
John Mark
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